Comparison of physician networks constructed from thresholded ties versus shared clinical episodes.

ABSTRACT:

Objective

To compare standard methods for constructing physician networks from patient-physician encounter data with a new method based on clinical episodes of care.

Data source

We used data on 100% of traditional Medicare beneficiaries from 51 nationally representative geographical regions for the years 2005-2010.

Study design

We constructed networks of physicians based on their shared patients. In the fixed-threshold networks and adaptive-threshold networks, we included data on all patient-physician encounters to form the physician-physician ties, and then subsequently thresholded some proportion of the strongest ties. In contrast, in the episode-based approach, only those patient-physician encounters that occurred within shared clinical episodes treating specific c

SUBMITTER: Onnela JP 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6214299 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature